-
I realise I haven’t written much about major news events recently. I have to admit that’s partly because some of the news has been so depressing that I’ve taken to greatly reducing my engagement with it. But even with that condition, it was remiss of me not to mention in the previous update that Shigeru Ishiba, the current Japanese Prime Minister, announced on Sunday 7 September that he will resign, presumably in early October (ABC News).
-
On Tuesday in the U.S. (early Wednesday morning here), Apple announced the new iPhones. This included the much-rumoured iPhone Air. Despite my protestations to the contrary in previous updates, I thought about trying to reserve a model. With my usage, I don’t need a battery that lasts forever and I suspect the lens on the Air would be sufficient for me. And it would be fun to have a phone with a ‘fresh’ design. In the end, though, I decided to stand pat. My iPhone 14 Pro Max is getting increasingly long in the tooth but it still works and I’m happier having spent money on the Mac Mini and the iPad Air earlier this year.
-
Apple also announced the new AirPods Pro 3. I’m more torn about these. I use my AirPods Pro 2 every day and, while very expensive compared to the cheapest earphones you can buy, I would immediately go out and buy a new pair if my current set disappeared. Supposedly the new ones are even better than these and mine recently started having issues charging that in my experience presages the need for a replacement. The thing is that, because they’re so expensive and because I know I use my AirPods enough that the battery inevitably stops working reliably, I uncharacteristically purchased AppleCare+ when I got these and so I possibly can get new pair of AirPods Pro 2 for either free/a small fee. That seems like the more responsible option.
-
The Pretty Cure movie for this year, You and Idol Pretty Cure the Movie: For You! Our Kirakilala Concert (Wikipedia), came out on Friday and Eri took Emma and John to see it on Saturday. Rowan wanted to go to and the cinema near us did have a screening in their ‘young children’ theatre but I worried that might be a sub-optimal experience for Emma and John so figured they should go by themselves. Instead, I took Rowan to Asobono and then to MOS Burger for lunch.
-
Now that Predoc is ‘working’ (for some degree of working), I went back to Jeep. It now has nice man pages for all its commands and those all (mostly) work. There are a couple more commands that I’d like to add and then I think it’ll have the basic set of features I think are necessary.
-
Talking to people about Jeep led to me wanting a glossary of terms that are relevant for Janet’s bundles. That doesn’t exist officially so I wrote my own. It’s not meant to be comprehensive but sets out some terms that I hope will be useful for the community.
-
Proving to myself that I am extremely white, I discovered that the man in the ‘Eddie Murphy tapping his head’ meme (i.e. this one) is not, in fact, Eddie Murphy. It’s the British actor Kayode Ewumi. He’s playing a character called ‘Roll Safe’ in the BBC Three mockumentary, Hood Documentary. You can watch the series via this playlist on BBC Three’s YouTube channel.
-
There’s this phenomenon now where I hear songs that I feel are new but which came out years ago and which I almost certainly have heard. The latest example of this is Halsey’s ‘Bad at Love’ from her 2017 album, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom (Apple Music). I all but had it on repeat for a good portion of this week.
